


Bump in the Night

by unicornsandbutane



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Awkward Sexual Situations, Bickering, Body Modification, Genital Piercing, Kaiju Bone Powder, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Phone Sex, flagrant disregard for OSHA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:28:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3304097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornsandbutane/pseuds/unicornsandbutane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt’s made a mistake, and it’s really a subjective matter whether it was a poor decision altogether or just a mere miscalculation. Regardless, he is forced to phone Hermann in the middle of the night, to deal with the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bump in the Night

“Hermann?” Newton’s voice was shrill and tinny over the phone, and Dr. Hermann Gottlieb resisted the urge to huff at the use of his given name. “I did a bad thing.”

Immediately, Hermann’s mind went to work, running down the list of things that could have gone wrong and categorising them from most to least dire. 

“I am not hearing any fire alarms. Is there a chemical spill?”

“No! It’s not—”

“Biological contamination?”

“No, not like—”

“Broken equipment?  _Dr. Geiszler, I swear to the powers almighty that if you’ve broken the communal iMac—_ ”

“ _Jesus,_  Hermann, calm down I just, uh…”

“Have you destroyed any of my work?” An icy edge crept into Hermann’s voice, and he briefly considered what he would do if Newt had damaged anything on his side of the lab. It was quite late, and he’d been attempting a few hours of sleep between Newton’s screeching music and the kaiju attacks, but he could put on his slippers and raise hell in his robe and pyjamas, if need be. 

“Why do you think I’m some sort of incompetent  _child_ , Hermann, I swear to god… All you do all day is multiply exponentials, while I’m actually coming up with new research. Anyone can multiply by factors of  _two_ , Hermann, I dunno why it takes you like, 300 square feet of chalkboard to do it in.”

“You know very well that I am not simply  _multiplying by twos_ , you insufferable little ingrate! How dare you discount the importance of my findings, mapping the breach, and the bridge between our world and theirs, and don’t you forget, I wrote the original program for the Mach I Jäger! If not for me you wouldn’t have any of your precious kaiju samples to drool over, because you’d be  _dead!_  You would have died in Los Angeles back in 2017, and sometimes I wonder if perhaps that’s my greatest failing, is writing the code that allowed you to keep on living!” Now completely awake, Hermann sat up in his bed, picking viciously at the coverlet and wondering if it would be prudent to begin gathering clothing to go confront Newton, and then maybe he could correct that mistake of years ago, by killing the man himself. 

“You are so full of yourself, do you know that? Mr. Big Fucking Hero, over here, saving all our unworthy asses… You know what, this isn’t helping. I don’t know why I thought you  _could_  help me, much less  _would,_ since you’re the most selfish prick I know.” 

“If you’ve only called to insult me, I am certain it can wait until morning. Otherwise, I suggest you get to the point.” Hermann gripped his blankets to stop himself from picking at them any further. It was taking a great deal of willpower to sit here and listen to Newton’s prattle, rather than simply hanging up and letting the man deal with whatever mess he’d made. Honestly, it was just as his mother always said: ‘you made the mess all by yourself, and that’s exactly how you are going to clean it.’ 

“Well, okay. But, promise you won’t freak out.”

“I do not like the sound of that.” He would make no such promise. “What on earth have you done?”

“Um, so, it’s a little hard to explain, but, uh. I’d kinda run up against a wall since the last kaiju attack left pretty much no samples for me to work with, and all of my stuff was degrading left and right, you know for most organics I have a very small window of opportunity before they start to— anyway. So I decided I’d go back to basics, and return to my bone slides, you know, because that’s where I started, back with Trespasser at Stanford—”

“Ah yes, your illustrious days of sneaking into Stanford University’s BioChem facilities to conduct illicit research.”

“Hey man, I was committed to the pursuit of knowledge, okay? The only reason I wasn’t actually  _in_  that program is because I didn’t apply.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Do go on. Bone slides?” Relaxing back into his pillows, Hermann resolved to let Newton live for at least a few more minutes, until he revealed exactly what he’d done that drove him to call his lab mate at 3:16 A.M., asking for help.

“Yeah. So I was unpacking them, and you know, some of these slides date back to 2017 with Yamarashi, and actually, a few of them are from Trespasser, 2013. And I hadn’t really unboxed them in a while, and I guess a couple of them got broken in one of the moves. One of them was really bad, it was closest to the outside of the box, you know, and whatever cracked my slides, that one must’ve taken the brunt of the hit. And the bone sample just basically fell apart without the glass supporting it. It was pretty much just dust and a few fragments in the bottom of the box. And that reminded me that there’s um. Some testimony that suggest that powdered kaiju bone has uh. Vasodilatory properties. But pretty much all of that is just, you know, hearsay and not really applicable to scientific discourse, so I decided to do a little, like, uh, experiment.” 

“… What kind of ‘ _experiment_ ’?” It was unlikely that Newton had gone to an all-night pet shop to procure  _test subjects_ , and so Hermann had the sneaking suspicion that the man himself had been the ‘guinea pig’ in whatever lunatic scheme he’d concocted this time. 

“Look, okay, I read all the available material first, but it doesn’t seem like anyone’s done any serious research on the stuff, even though it apparently fetches a  _very_  high price on the black market.” 

“Whatever for?!” Hermann knew Newton was stalling, talking around the issue, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know why. 

“Hermann, do you remember Smiling Bob for Enzyte?”

“I… what? No, was that a character from ‘Clerks’ or something?” 

“Haha,  _no!_ Oh my god, you’ve seen ‘ _Clerks’_? No, stop, don’t distract me. The point is, it turns out kaiju bone powder  _does_ have vasodilatory properties, and uh… I’m not sure what to do with the uh… effects.”

“Are you experiencing chest pain? I cannot understand why you would call  _me_  and not the on-duty medical officer.” 

“No, no, no chest pain. Just, uh. You know how those ads for like, Cialis and Viagra always said, ‘if you experience an erection lasting more than 4 hours, seek medical attention’?”

Hermann was quiet. He felt he needed to choose his next words carefully, and wasn’t sure how to express that this was perhaps the stupidest, most reckless stunt he’d ever seen Newton pull, without sounding insensitive to what might actually be a medical emergency. 

“Do you mean to tell me that you  _consumed samples of kaiju bone_ , and it gave you a… a  _persistent erection_?” 

“If you’re gonna make another ‘kaiju groupie’ joke, I really don’t wanna hear it right now.”

“I… D—  _Newton_. This could potentially be quite serious. I truly believe it is in your best interest to speak to a doctor—”

“I  _am_ speaking to a doctor.”

“A  _medical_  doctor. There must be a reason all of those products had warnings like that. And I highly  doubt  _kaiju bone powder_  is approved by any sort of clinical administrative body. How did you even know how much to take?”

“Well, all the forums said two teaspoons, usually mixed into a tea or with peanut butter or something, but, uh… I might’ve taken more than that.” Newton’s voice went up a register again, and Hermann pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Why on earth would you do that? Just because you think you’re Superman—”

“I don’t think I’m Superman. I really think I’m more like Spiderman.”

“ _This is why I think you are a child, Newton! It is because you consistently act like one!_ How much of that ruddy stuff did you take?!” 

“Uh. In my defense, ‘2’ and ‘5’ look  _very similar_.”

“Five is two and a half times  _more_  than two! You took _two and a half times_  the recommended dosage of an unlicensed, possibly  _poisonous_ substance, and now, at half three,  _in the middle of the bloody night_ , you are calling me, instead of talking to a medical professional?! I don’t understand it, Newton. Truly, I do not. Five teaspoons, Newton? What if you died of an overdose, or had a stroke, or a bleeding  _heart attack_? Why wouldn’t you check that sort of thing? That’s only scientific, isn’t it?” Hermann felt like tearing his hair out. He didn’t understand why Newton Geiszler, the best and the brightest in the field of kaiju biology, continually endangered himself like this. Couldn’t he just use rats like  _everyone else_? 

“Yeah, well, I  _haven’t_  had a heart attack, and basically all I’m trying to do here is keep talking, to stay awake, so I can monitor symptoms, alright?” 

“There’s an on-call med-tech at any given time in this building, are you aware?”

“I don’t want anyone seeing me like this!” Newt whined, and there was a moment of silence before, with nearly palpable smugness, Hermann said:

“Ah, well. I suppose nobody ever  _has_.”

Hermann could practically  _hear_  Newt blinking in shock.

“Oh my god. Oh my god you complete and total  _ass_ , I can’t believe you’re making jokes like that at a time like this. I can’t believe  _you’re_ making jokes like that. A fucking ‘ha ha  _virgin_ ’ joke? Seriously? You wanna try for a ‘your mom’, too, just to give me the complete 12 year old experience?” Newt almost wanted to laugh, because Hermann Fucking Gottlieb, the world’s foremost math geek, the most prominent fucking computer weenie on the face of this goddamn planet of earth, was making goddamned  _dick jokes._ He didn’t laugh, though. He scrubbed a hand through his hair and chewed his lip and debated with himself. “Jesus Christ, Gottlieb. If that’s how you’re gonna be, I’ll just go on without your help.”

“You are far too old to pout.” Hermann resettled his phone. Could he just place it between his ear and the pillow, without falling asleep on it?

Newt snarled, and rolled his head on his shoulders. “Goddamn it, Hermann, you’re the only man I trust!” 

The quiet stretched out between them as Hermann tried to formulate a response, and Newt panicked. He knew he oughtn’t have said that, oughtn’t have owned up to it, even if they  _had_  worked together for a decade or so. 

“That…” Hermann coughed, “is really very sad.” 

And Newt had to think about that, because for once, Hermann didn’t even sound condescending. 

“What—” Hermann seemed to choke, and cleared his throat. “What all have you done to, er,  _rectify_  the situation?”

Newt felt a flush climbing his neck, despite himself, and he almost considered calling this whole exercise off if it meant he’d have to talk to  _Hermann Gottlieb_  about masturbation.

“You know, uh,” he deliberated. “The usual stuff.” That’s where he settled. 

“Right, well.” Hermann hesitated, and Newt knew that, had they been standing, facing one another, this is the point at which Gottlieb would take to twisting his cane in his hand, scraping the rubber stopper against the diamond-cut steel floor. Rhythmic, measured turns, the wood in his hand and the rubber against the floor gave the man something to fixate on— likely, something to look at that  _wasn’t Newt_. But, he’d said he was in bed, so he was probably settling for pulling threads out of something. “How, that is, how often are your attempts?” Hermann’s voice sounded far away, and Newt wasn’t sure if that was because it had dropped by a register, or if it was the rushing of blood in his ears. 

“How am I supposed to answer a goddamn question like that?!” 

“ _Like the bloody scientist you are, Newton!_ I want integers, I want data I can  _use!_ Christ, give me something to go on, or else I don’t know why you called me at all!” He was groping around for a notebook, biro in hand. Even if he couldn’t make sense of why Newton would do such a damned  _lunatic_  thing as ingesting alien tissue, he could at least make sense of numbers. Maths, at the very least, he  _understood_. 

“Okay, okay. Jeez, um.” Newt took a deep breath, and tried to disassociate, tried to get into the whole science  _zone_ , so he could just report things to his goddamned lab partner, like he was back in AP Biology in high school and he was rattling off features of a foetal pig’s left ventricle, and not like it was 2025, in Hong Kong, and certainly not like he was talking about his  _junk_  to Hermann I-Only-Smile-with-Condescension Gottlieb. “Twice, once at approximately 0100 and again, approximately one half hour later. It has been nearly two hours since the last, um—” he stumbled, and then decided to use Hermann’s own language, “—‘attempt’. There has been no discernible, uh, diminish…ment? Uh, declination, I guess, of symptoms. Affected, y’know,  _organ_  exhibits redness, but not more than is strictly  _normal_ , per se. Subject experiences discomfort, frustration, and a scattering of thoughts. He is currently evaluating his life and his choices.” 

Hermann had written 1:00 and 1:30 in his notebook, and paused. “Was there any appreciable change in your, that is, ‘symptoms’, immediately following those attempts?”

“Nnno, I wouldn’t say so. I couldn’t uh. I didn’t. Y’know.”

“You couldn’t…?” The question hung in the air for a moment before it clicked and Hermann glanced at the wall, avoiding the gaze of an imagined audience. “And I suppose you’ve taken care to eliminate variables that might’ve contributed to that?”

“Like what, besides the obvious?” Newt tapped his fingers against the desk and rocked in his rolling chair. He felt like gnawing through his lip. 

“Like… situational elements that are otherwise unlike the setup you usually have for yourself when you, when you, oh, damn it all, when you  _wank off!_ You know what I mean!” He sounded about half as frantic as Newt felt. 

“‘Situational elements’?” His feet tapped the ground, staccato against the steel. 

“ _Newton,_ I don’t know what you usually do at times like this, but I’m sure you have a… a methodology! A particular fantasy you engage in, or, or a porn you watch, something? Perhaps an element was missing, you know?”

“Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re talking about porn.”

“I’m not!” Hermann insisted. “I only mentioned that— Look. You’re in the safety of your own room, and what you get up to in there is none of my business. So, perhaps you should recreate the most normal parameters for such an act, you see? Reproducible results?” 

The few seconds of quiet made Hermann panic more than he felt they had any right to. 

“Hermann…?” Again, just as when he’d first called, Newton’s voice sounded high and thin. “I’m not exactly  _in_  my own room. So… ‘mundane’ isn’t really happening, dude.” 

“ _Don’t tell me…_ ” 

“Well I can tell you where I’m  _not._ ”

“ _Newton…_ ”

“I mean, I might’ve broken OSHA procedure,  _just_ a little.”

“Of all the hare-brained, irresponsible, dim-witted,  _unsanitary—_ ”

“Hey man, I’m on  _my side_ ,” Newt noted, as if that would help his case. 

“ _Lovely_ , so you not only  _ate_ kaiju parts but you have now possibly rubbed them all over yourself?” Hermann rolled over onto his back and stared at the ceiling. He knew fairly well the effects of Kaiju Blue. It wasn’t really his area of study, but close proximity had a way of insinuating Dr. Geiszler’s work into his brain. This could perhaps evolve into a ‘semi-critical’ or even ‘critical’ level decontamination event. He mentally went through a checklist of what would need to get done, especially to avoid the HazMat team turning on the sprinklers and destroying his equations. 

“I did  _not_ , Hermann. I’ve been at this job like, pretty much since the beginning, like, since 2013. That’s twelve years. If my standards and practices training was a child, it would be thinking about asking a girl to the 7th and 8th grade winter formal, about now.”

“It… what?” Hermann’s hand found its way into his hair. The clock crawled toward 4AM. 

“I’m not thinking too clearly right now. Was I really supposed to cart the electron microscope and all that stuff into my room? And I wanted to be near the chemical shower, just in case… I don’t know. I’m really. I just. To be honest? I’ve been hard so long it fuckin’  _hurts_ , man. Like, it  _burns_.”

“I assume you’ve already read all the relevant scholarly articles on treatments for this sort of thing?” Despite himself, Hermann felt a pang of sympathy pain for the man. 

“Yeah, yeah. I don’t want to take any pseudoephedrine, though, because I don’t know how it’ll react with the bone powder, you know? And I really don’t want to go the surgical route. So like, if I could take care of this, like,  _organically_? That’d be ideal.”

“Organically,” Hermann repeated drily. “Again, I ask why you called me?” He could sense that Newton was going to get him into serious trouble one of these days, dragging him into these ridiculous half-baked schemes of his. 

“You’re uh. My spotter. You know. If something goes wrong?” 

“It’s already gone wrong, can’t you see that?! And what am I supposed to do, hold the line while you attempt to rub one out?” He looked at the touchscreen on his phone. They’d been talking in circles for close on 25 minutes. 

To his dismay, Newt was quiet on the other end.

“Newton, what’s happened?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just… man, you can’t say shit like that to me right now. My overtaxed brain can’t take it.” He was probably going to regret admitting that. He was going to regret a lot of things, he was sure. But, it was almost four o’ clock in the goddamn  _morning_  and he’d been hard since like… five to one. If nothing else, he was sure Gottlieb was too uptight to ever mention it again, so he was pretty sure his secret was safe.

Hermann’s palm landed against his face, and he squinted between his fingers at the peeling blue paint on the curved metal that formed his ceiling. “What did I say that you found so disagreeable?” His voice was muffled by the pressure of his hand, and Newt twisted in his seat.

“It’s just… you know, I mean— Nah, fuck it, never mind.”

“What?”

“I said forget it, man! Shit!” 

“Are we going to do this all night, Newton? Truly, I would like to get  _some_ rest, if it’s all the same to you.”

“ _Don’t go!_ ” Newt’s outburst, hissed desperately into the phone, made Hermann groan aloud. 

“Well you’d better bloody well do something! I tell you, I am very quickly becoming quite cross.”

“Oh,  _quite cross_ , indeed! Pip pip and all that rot!” Newton’s approximation of a posh accent was utterly dreadful. 

“That isn’t what I sound like, at all,” Hermann complained. 

“Well, what were you suggesting I  _do_ , anyway?” He knew the clock was ticking, and the longer this went on, the more likely  _complications_ became. “You got anymore bright ideas?”

“Whatever happened to your ‘organic’ plan?” Hermann groused from beneath his hand. Of course Newton would want to do things ‘organically’. That was his entire modus operandi, wasn’t it? Organics. Hermann would have laughed if he wasn’t so completely knackered. 

“What, really? You think I should just, try to jack it again? ‘Cuz that didn’t work so well the first two times.”

“Mm, but it takes three points of data to make a line. You can’t get any sort of correlation from just  _two_.” Hermann was drifting off. They both knew it. 

“Don’t fall asleep on me, man. I need your help.”

“No you don’t. I’m fully certain you’ve been managing on your own since puberty.” Hermann stifled a jaw-cracking yawn.

“But seriously. How am I supposed to do that when I’m afraid of penile gangrene?”

“Charming thought, that. Just… Lie back and think of England.” 

“England?  _That’s_  your goddamn pillow talk? Oh my god, I bet you are just the absolute  _worst_ in bed.”

Hermann cracked an eye open. “ _What?_ ”

“No, I bet you’re all like, ‘oh yes, touch my  _prick_ , that’s _jolly good_ , yes’.” He imitated a sort of chortling laughter he must have heard from Mitchell and Webb in the early 2000’s. 

“That is horrible,” Hermann protested. “Everything about that was unspeakably—”

“Rude? Or  _true?_ ” Newton felt a little less off-kilter, giving Hermann a hard time. It felt familiar, at least. It was comfortable. 

“Where on Earth are you even getting that rubbish?  _Mary Poppins?_ ” Who said ‘jolly good’ anymore,  _really_? 

“That movie is old enough to be the Marshall’s dad. Maybe even old enough to be  _your_  dad, grandpa.” Newt shifted his cock out of his boxer shorts, just to relieve the pressure. 

“I am seven and a half months older than you, Newton Geiszler!” Had they been standing together, Hermann would have punctuated that with a tap of his cane against the ground. 

“Ooh, senpai noticed me!” Newt cooed sarcastically. 

“This is a complete waste of time,” Hermann complained, “And I don’t think you’re taking the gravity of the situation to heart!” 

“Man, you really do have the worst dirty talk, like,  _ever._ ” Just because his hand was already there, Newt’s fingers had begun playing at his base. Just a little, though, nothing serious. Nothing  _really_  obscene, anyway. 

“I was not trying to— that isn’t— You are impossible!” He felt his face growing hot, and was glad that Newton couldn’t see him. 

“Oh no? Then what’s your best sexy talk sound like? Bring your A-game, Herms, c’mon. If you can do better than my  _perfect mimicry_  of you, I’ll buy you an egg waffle.” 

Hermann muttered something along the lines of, ‘I don’t want your blasted egg waffle,’ but then heaved a great sigh and wondered if this was just Newton having a go at him, or if he was trying to distract himself from the danger of his predicament. 

“What’s the situation?” he asked, rearranging his pillow and stretching out his bad leg. “To whom am I speaking?”

“Uhh, does it really matter?” Without really thinking about it, Newt had picked up the pace with his stroking hand. Autopilot, really.

“Of course it matters. Am I talking to, perhaps, a young lady I’ve met at a cafe, or, someone from J-tech? Maybe… your mother?”

“SHIT, YOU FUCKER, I KNEW YOU’D PULL A ‘YOUR MOM’ JOKE ON ME!” this time Newt  _did_ laugh, but it was breathless, short. “Listen you asshat, I don’t care if it’s the cybernetically enhanced zombie of Ada Lovelace, but you’d better come up with  _something_ because I’m beginning to think you’ve got no moves at  _all._ ” 

The reverse psychology was quaint, but Hermann rolled his eyes and cleared his throat. Not wanting to be overheard (even through the five inches of solid metal that comprised his door), he dropped his voice to barely above a whisper, and cupped his hand around the mouthpiece of the phone. “Is that what does it for you, Newton? Hearing someone curl endearments into the phone? You do this often, do you? Ring an agency up for phone sex?”

“Haha, never,” Newt replied, but his voice was tight.

“I rather think it is. Are you ashamed of it, Newton? Do you just  _burn_ , thinking about what might happen if somebody discovered your dirty little secret?”

“Dude, what are you even talking about?” He was trying to regulate his breathing, to appear unaffected, even as he rubbed his palm over the tip of his painfully erect cock. He licked his lips and his eyelids fluttered. 

“Am I wrong? Well, then, do tell me. What is it that  _really_  gets you off?” He shouldn’t feel that blush creeping down his throat. This was just another form of bickering, after all. Just because the tone of his voice had changed, didn’t meant it wasn’t exactly the same as any other argument they might have had. 

“I uh, I dunno, man… How’m I supposed to tell  _you_  that?”

“How am  _I_ to dirty talk to  _you_?” Hermann countered. Giving in to his embarrassment would be admitting defeat. “Am I meant to pretend that this is commonplace for us? That we will frequently call one another to whisper sweet nothings into the other’s ear?” 

The saccharine quality in Hermann’s voice just dripped with malice. Newt gripped himself a little tighter. ‘Only to get this over with,’ he thought. 

“No, I daresay not, eh, old boy? Such things would never— We would be terrible bedfellows, you and I. For one, I think I would devote a great deal of my time attempting to shut you up. Is that why you wear such a ridiculously skinny tie? Because you know it could never be used as a gag? Too thin, not enough material. Maybe that kerchief you occasionally keep in the back pocket of your jeans. If I could verify its cleanliness, I might stuff it between your teeth, keep you from yammering on for a moment or two.” 

“Uh… Uh-huh?” Newt’s cock gave a throb, and he actually felt like he was getting somewhere. Maybe the powder was finally working its way out of his system?

“Yes. In fact, I think that might be a good look for you: bound and gagged. An improvement.” Hermann had closed his eyes again, and relaxed into the pillows. 

Newt swallowed, and brushed his thumb against the ridge forming the crown of his cockhead. “Bound? Who said I was getting tied up?” The phone balanced between his shoulder and ear made for very awkward stroking. Consciously, he slowed down the motions of his hand, so the sound wouldn’t be so obvious from Hermann’s end.

He heard the mathematician chuckle, and the hair at the base of his neck stood on end. It was a cruel laugh, but not one he thought he’d ever heard before. Hermann Gottlieb could be a smug asshole— and he was, most of the time— but this laugh was more self-satisfied, more self-assured, than Newt recalled ever hearing from the man. 

“Why,  _I_ did, just now,” he replied. “It would keep you from doing anything  _reckless_ ,” Hermann needled, “And it would force you to slow your pace. I get the feeling you’d be terribly impatient. A  _brat_  of the worst kind. Left to your own devices I’m sure you’d barrel through a sexual encounter like a teen with his father’s new car.” 

Newt scoffed. “That’s  _so_  not even true!” he asserted, feeling his erection twitch in his fingers. “I am  _totally_  an attentive lover. Like, for real.”

“Remarkably, ‘like for real’ does not instil confidence in me.” Hermann could hear shuffling and wondered if Newton was alright, if something had changed about his circumstances. “I hypothesise that, without something holding you back, you would be all over your partner, like an amorous starfish, hands and tongue everywhere, rutting and making unseemly noises.”

Newt caught his reflection in the black computer screen and knew he was blushing, knew his face had begun to shine with sweat. “Actually, they’re called  _sea stars_ , because they’re echinoderms, not  _fish,_ ” he corrected. 

“Whatever,” Hermann dismissed. “That is irrelevant, and a perfect illustration for your need for a gag.”

“It’s not  _my_  need,” Newt complained, but Hermann spoke over him.

“—Your tie might be good for something after all. I could use it to tie your wrists, behind you. Or over your head. Do you think, you would be on your back, or on your knees?” Hermann thought he was getting dangerously close to something. That had really been a thoroughly inappropriate question, and he hoped Newton didn’t think too much on it. 

The small sound from the back of Newt’s throat was not the answer he’d expected. “I guess that depends,” Newt countered, after a pause, “On what I’d be doing.” 

Hermann swallowed. Yes, this was treading in treacherous territory. “Doctor Geiszler,” he croaked, voice far less steady than he’d like. Well, he was supposed to be demonstrating skilful dirty talk, wasn’t he? “Have you ever sucked a cock?”

He waited for the bomb to drop, certain that Newton was going to burst out laughing. Instead, a rasping breath rattled through the phone, and Newt replied, “Once, um, during my undergrad.”

That in itself was pretty shocking, but more so was Newton’s willingness to talk about it. Hermann’s eyebrows shot up and he blinked at his ceiling again, chasing away the unbidden images of Newton Geiszler, on his knees, his lips stretched around another student’s erection, open fly of the stranger’s jeans brushing Newton’s faintly freckled cheeks. He licked his lips. 

“What about you?” Newt asked, feeling like if he was going to share, he was going to get something out of the stuffy astrophysicist, too. 

Hermann sputtered. “How— You—  _Newton!_ ” 

Laughing, Newton leaned as if conspiratorially into his phone-cradling arm. “Was that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?” he teased, and he heard Hermann click his tongue. He was sure he was going to get an earful.

A wobbly moment of silence hung between them, and then, in the crispest tone Hermann could muster, he answered, “I have, yes.” 

Newt could  _hear_  the stiff downward turn of the man’s lips, the way he’d look down his nose and square his shoulders, trying to appear untouchable. He could also imagine the way Hermann blushed. Would it be different, the way colour spread from his nose across his cheeks and out to his ears, crawled up under his collar like it did after any particularly infuriating insult? Would it be different, if it was a sex flush, and not heat brought on by shame or indignation? He bit his lips against a groan, fingers playing around his aching flesh, staving off the burn. 

“More than once?” he prompted, wondering how much Hermann would reveal. 

“That isn’t  _really_  any of your business, now is it, Newton?” Hermann argued. His heart was in his throat. What would Newton do with that knowledge? Would he hold it over his head, tease him about it in the lab, or worse, in front of other people? Would he awake to find somebody had scrawled ‘QUEERMO’ across his door, in lieu of a locker? 

“Fuck, really?” Newton panted. “It’s hard to picture you being into that kinda thing. You’re so uptight, I can’t imagine what you’re like when you’re getting sexed up. Sounds an awful lot like you’re into bondage though. I knew someone as weird and prudish as you had to be secretly a big kinky bastard.” 

Hermann seethed. He took several deep breaths to calm his blood, and sucked his teeth. “You don’t know anything about me,” he maintained, but felt his hair prickle at the sound of Newt’s breathy laugh. 

“Maybe not, but I’m learning. And you know what they say, knowledge is power.”

“Was that a  _threat?_ ” Would Newton go to their superiors, and put the final nail in Hermann’s respectability coffin? He’d devoted so much time to this job, to the idea that if he didn’t, the world would come to an end… and perhaps that was hubris, to think he was that instrumental to the continued survival of the human race and Life As We Know It, but, what else could he do? More people supported the Coastal Wall project than the PPDC, and if the Jäger program was  _completely_ dismantled—

“No, no, dude, shit, just calm your tits for one second, goddamn. I just. Even my  _piercing_  hurts, I’ve been hard so long. This is like, worse than when it was healing.” He turned the barbell delicately, wincing slightly. Usually, that felt pretty good, but with so much blood in his tissues, it was just this side of painful.

For a moment, Hermann seemed at a loss for words. Then, very calmly: “You have a genital piercing.”

“I do, yeah. I’ve had it for ages. How come, like, a couple minutes ago you were all, ‘ _Have you ever sucked a cock_?’ and now you’re saying ‘ _genital_ ’, like, did some horny alien take over your body for thirty seconds, or what?” 

“‘ _Aliens_ ’ is precisely why your cock has been erect for three hours! Of course, that might be an  _average evening_  for—” he cut himself off, took a steadying breath. Despite himself, Hermann wondered what on earth had possessed Newton to get his penis pierced. And, God above,  _where_? But how could he ask without sounding too… invasive? “The skin around your piercing, is it abnormally swollen?”

“ _Everything_ down there is abnormally swollen!”

“I mean, is it forming a bump, like an abscess?” It was Hermann’s turn to wince. He was sure Newton would bring this up later. ‘Remember when I said you couldn’t talk dirty to save your life, and you asked if my dick had an abscess? Ha ha, good times.’ His fingers twisted in the covers. “T-tell me where it hurts.” He hoped he could pass off the slight stutter as interference by their phone connection. 

“It’s over-sensitive, is all. I just wish I could get off, this is really starting to limit my higher brain functions and don’t you dare say a word, Hermann, I swear to God!” Newt gripped himself at the base, and gave himself a solid stroke. “It’s my apadravya. Or, as I like to call it, my happydrivah. I’ve had it for like, four years, so it’s completely healed, and it’s not like, irritated. Just, fuck, man.”

“What is a… whatever you said?” He didn’t want to try and mimic Newton’s pronunciation. Likely it would just be thrown back in his face. 

“It’s a piercing that goes vertically through the glans, like, you know, the head? Yeah— passing through the urethra. It’s not as bad as it— okay, yeah,  _getting_  the piercing hurt like a bitch, but it healed up pretty easy. And, you know. Increased stimulation and all that. Actually, there’s a similar piercing that goes horizontally, instead of vertically. It’s called the ampallang, and it’s traditional to the native peoples of a few areas in Southeast Asia, and it’s said that the women in these groups can insist that their partners have this piercing, or else they can demand a divorce, because apparently the sex is so much better with it, as opposed to without.” 

“Apparently?” 

“Dude you vastly overrate the number of sexual partners I’ve had. Oh my god, is that how you think of me? You think I’m some kind of Don Juan?” Newton began to laugh, but caught himself on an sharp intake of breath. “Herms, I didn’t think you cared. I’m glad to hear that you think I’m such a stud.” A pause. “Haha, ‘stud’, get it? It’s a piercing joke.”

Hermann resisted the urge to bash his head against the wall. He couldn’t very well respond to  _that_ , now could he? He swallowed, and closed his eyes. 

“It doesn’t usually hurt when you are erect, does it?” he pressed on. He felt he’d been furrowing his brows for so long it was giving him a headache. Or maybe it was just the entire series of events to blame. Regardless, he didn’t want Newton putting too fine a point on that last train of conversation. 

“No, no. The post is long enough to account for that sort of thing. It has to be, you know?”

“Yes, you never know when that might come in handy. For example, should you find the need to administer yourself an overdose of extraterrestrial organic matter in the  _middle of the night_ , your cock ring will be there to compensate.”

Some loud, but indistinct static met Hermann’s ear, and he flinched away from his phone with a scowl. 

“What in God’s name was that?” he demanded, but Newton didn’t give any sort of real answer, just more strangled half-syllables, followed by a muted curse. “Newton, are you alright?”

Newt held his breath and let it out in a long sigh. “Yeah. I’m fine. Well, no, still, fucking hard as I was when I first called you. For a second there I thought it was gonna… I dunno. But yeah, no, no change.”

“You thought it was going to what?” Hermann tried to tamp down on the sick feeling from the horrific images his mind helpfully conjured— ruptured blood vessels or  _worse_. 

“I thought it was getting better? But it’s gone. Not my— but, y’know, the feeling, that circumstances were changing.”

“What do you think caused that? Some minute trick of biology, or is it something you could repeat?”  Hermann felt utterly exhausted. As if life wasn’t stressful enough, his lab partner was keeping him awake with an emotional roller coaster of antagonism and worry. 

“ _I dunno…_ ” Newt whined, slumping in his chair. “I don’t wanna talk about this anymore. Can we go back to the part where you were attempting dirty talk? That was at least amusing.” 

“For  _whom_ , exactly?” 

“For  _me_ , obviously.” 

Hermann could imagine the teasing smile, and he huffed, but closed his eyes and dug his head back into his pillow. 

“How many sexual partners have you had since getting that piercing?” It was easier to talk if his eyes were closed. So long as he didn’t doze off, it would be fine. 

“Um,” Newt considered. Why did Hermann want to know, anyway? Well, there was no point in lying. “Two.” 

Hermann’s brow twitched. “Anyone I know?” He wondered if Newton had made secret arrangements with someone at the ‘Dome, and if so, why had they been secret?

“Not unless you hang around tattoo parlors or go to grindcore shows, my man.” Newton grinned at Hermann’s answering scoff. He bucked his hips into his palm.

“And how did they react to that particular body modification?” Hermann wasn’t sure what he would do if faced with something like that. The urge to tug the barbell gently with his teeth might prove too great… he wondered if that would hurt. He could curl his tongue from the ball end of the piercing on the bottom, through the slit and up to meet the top fastener. He assumed that’s what it would look like, like an ear scaffold, but through Newton’s— that is,  _a partner’s_  cock. He adjusted his pyjamas. 

A pause on Newton’s end, and more shuffling. “Uh, well, the girl I met at the tattoo shop was pretty okay with it, but I mean,  _duh_ , right? The one I met at the concert though was a little surprised though. My Cantonese wasn’t really good enough to explain ahead of time, so, I dunno. I only went down on her and she gave me a handy, so it wasn’t like… I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” 

“Are you starved for sexual contact, Newton?” He tried to make it sound harsh and disdainful, but it didn’t come out that way. Newton’s response, a shaky, drawn-out sigh, made his hair prickle. 

“Usually, no, but right now,  _fuck_  yes.”

Hermann shuddered. “And you never saw either of them again?” He just couldn’t get his voice to sound as sharp as he usually would. His skin raced hot and he explained it with embarrassment over the things he was prying out of his lab partner. 

“No, it uh,” Newt trailed off for a moment, and Hermann swallowed. “It never worked out,” Newt finished lamely. Perhaps he wasn’t the best for conversation with his hand wrapped around his cock.

“Mm,” Hermann answered, and the low timbre of his voice fused crucial parts of Newt’s brain together. His hand sped up. “And, what did your friend from the tattoo parlour  _do_  for you, Newton?”

Hermann’s fingertips had strayed under the elastic waistband of his pyjamas. Cold, that was all. 

“We fucked,” was Newt’s simple answer. “In a very classic fashion.”

What Hermann  _meant_  to say was something to the effect of, ‘That’s hardly the level of maverick creativity-cum-recklessness I’ve come to expect from you,’ but instead what came out was, “So then, nobody’s sucked you off since you had your cock pierced?” and he cursed himself, because he was  _sure_  that was telling.

“Man, what is it with you and oral sex?” Newt asked, tactless as always, and there it was. Newton Geiszler was a great many things, but  _stupid_  was not one of them. Hermann braced for the accusation. “Not that I’m complaining. I would fucking  _die_  for a blow job right now.” His voice was shattered, and the rhythmic sound of his strokes finally filtered through the phone, whereas either Newt had hidden it beforehand, or Hermann had refused to hear it.

He heard it then. His own hand inched down. “From anybody?” he instigated. It was an effort not to bite his lips in anticipation.

“Shit, yeah,” Newt sighed, and then, inexplicably, “Even from you.” 

Hermann gasped before he could stop himself, fingertips brushing his rising cock, as Newt continued to talk. 

“Admit it, Hermann, you’re way into that sort of thing. Blow jobs and bondage, huh? You wanna tie someone up and then fuck their mouth? Or is it the other way around?” 

The sound that rose unbidden to Hermann’s lips was very difficult to stifle. “I… what?” He cupped himself within the confines of his pyjamas, relieving pressure. 

“Because I gotta say, Hermann, that would be  _super_  kinky of you, to want to tie a guy’s hands behind his back just so he’d be powerless to stop you from sucking his dick.” 

Hermann was caught. Another denial would sound childish and unconsidered, but he was  _so tired_  of being the butt of Newton’s jokes. And his own erection throbbed at the sound of Newt’s laboured breathing through the phone, those little hitched breaths that Hermann could bet marked out each time Newt’s palm passed over the head of his cock. 

“Well, I’ve never heard any complaints,” he dismissed, finally. 

Newt couldn’t help but think about it, think about Hermann Gottlieb, finicky, self-important, Hermann Gottlieb, laid out on his belly in front of his bound partner— would it just be hands tied behind the back or, no, he’d bet money it would be some kind of elaborate shibari thing, because damn near every guy he’d ever met who was into rope bondage was a computer nerd. Hermann would probably take his sweet time looping soft ropes around Newt’s body— or, y’know, anyone’s body. Whoever. He could just see the way they’d cross his skin, though, white rope against bright tattoos, holding him in place, making him feel secure and contained, Hermann’s long, bony fingers brushing him ever so softly, teasingly, as he worked. He’d try to hide his smile, bite down on his thin, bloodless lips with those slightly uneven teeth of his, worn sharp by years of nail biting, as Newt’s cock hung heavy and ready between his splayed legs, drawn up tight by a sling of cords that gripped him at his base just shy of too tight. He sucked in a sharp breath.

“You give a lot of head, Herms?” He tried to laugh, and choked, thinking of the slow, methodical way Hermann would probably go about it, sliding his tongue from balls to tip, circling, and back down again, over and over until Newt was begging, nearly crying with want, before Hermann would even deign to wrapping his lips around him, tongue settling under his piercing and massaging it from beneath, wiggling it and making Newt see stars. His thighs shook at the vivid mental image, and he licked his lips.

“I  _did_  attend an all-male boarding school throughout my adolescence, you know…” Hermann reminded him, voice slightly pinched as he gave himself a few tentative tugs before shoving his pyjama bottoms out of the way.

“Is it really that common?!” Newt squeaked. “Shit, where the hell was  _I?_ ” He couldn’t believe Hermann of all people got more action than him. That wasn’t very ‘rockstar’. Was the guy  _good_? He certainly ran his mouth enough, had to have a strong tongue, and he’d probably look fucking  _sexy_  with his jaw stretched to accommodate Newt’s cock, eyes closed and long, dark eyelashes standing out against his sharp, pale cheekbones. 

“I wouldn’t say  _common._ ” If Newton found out he was touching himself whilst talking to him over the phone, like a common pervert, he was certain he’d never live it down.

“I’m just wondering if I missed out, going to a co-ed school. Did you have, like, a sister school? Where all the girls wore plaid skirts and white button-downs? Y’know, like, Catholic schoolgirls?” He imagined what Hermann’s school uniform might have looked like. Probably slacks, an oxford shirt with a tie, a blazer. In his mind’s eye, the blazer was as oversized as Hermann’s parka, swallowing his fingers and making him seem even thinner. What a pick-on-able little dweeb. He wanted to muss up Hermann’s stupid bowl cut as he gripped his hair and fucked his mouth. By the sounds of it, Hermann would fucking love that… well, you know, if it was anyone but  _Newt_  doing it. 

“‘ _Schoolgirls’_ ,” Hermann drawled in that inimitable fashion, “Are precisely  _not_  what you think they are, Newton.” He rolled his eyes and gripped himself at the base. 

“You’re just saying that because you’re gay as hell, dude,” Newt complained.  _Fuck,_ he could just picture the way Hermann’s clever fingers would wrap around his shaft while his mouth worked the tip, his hand slipping down to roll Newt’s balls… Or maybe,  _shit_ , maybe with all that practice, Hermann could actually deep-throat, and the thought made Newt groan under his breath. 

“ _Now_  who is making jokes like a twelve-year-old?” Hermann quipped, partway trying to ignore the desperate little sound Newton had made, and partway amplifying it in his mind. Lord, what would Newton sound like, if he was getting  _fucked_? He would probably beg and howl and curse, his eyes screwed tight and his glasses fogged, and askew. He’d lick his lips too much, and roll his hips, and it would never be fast enough or hard enough for him. 

Newt answered with a derisive snort and said, “Just pointing out the facts, man. Observable truths.” He thought Hermann’s breath might have sped up, or else, his fevered brain was imagining it, but either way, it made all of this so much more real and visceral. “As evidenced by the copious amounts of dick you apparently sucked in school.” Hermann was saying something that sounded like, ‘it wasn’t  _copious amounts_ ’, but Newt wasn’t listening. “What would you say to a guy, when you wanted to go down on him? Would you just, slide down the bed and push your face into his trousers, because that’s actually… kinda hot.” 

Hermann grunted and his hips canted up into his hand. God, what was he doing with his life? He was 35 years old and fucking his fist while talking to his lab partner on the phone. “I might have done, at some point. I daresay I simply  _asked_  most of the time.” He didn’t know what Newton thought of that. 

“Like how?” Newt persisted, and he heard the tremulous sigh fro Hermann’s end.

“I don’t know, Newton, it  _really_  would depend on the situation. It could be something as simple as ‘Something I can do for you?’ or something… more explicit.” He attempted to recall  relevant instances with exes, but it was so hard to think of anything but Newton’s harsh breath echoing through the receiver. 

Newt’s fist twisted at the head of his cock, and on the way back down, his thumb caught his piercing, rolling it against his skin. “‘Explicit’?” he asked, and he realised how different it felt, jacking off this time versus the other two times. “Like what, ‘Let me wrap my mouth around your dick’?”

“ _Oh_ ,” Hermann sighed, but then covered with, “ _Oh_ , you know. ‘I would love to suck you off,’ or ‘Do you want to come down my throat?’ Crude, obscene things.” He couldn’t believe what he was saying, and shook his head against the humiliation.

“ _God_ ,  _fuck, Hermann!_ ” Newt barked. “That is… oh my god, hearing  _you_  say that is doing some crazy things to me right now. Shit, if you said that to  _me_ , I dunno if I’d be able to resist.  _Christ_.”

Hermann’s heart leapt, and so did his erection. For a moment, he ignored the persistent doubts, the feeling that Newton would just make fun of him later, and said, “Nobody with whom I’ve ever been intimate had a  _pierced cock_ , Newton. If you were to say to me that you wanted to fuck my mouth until your piercing rubbed my throat raw, I don’t know if  _I’d_  be able to resist.” He pictured it, his nose buried in Newton’s pubic hair, his tongue poking out of his mouth to tease Newton at his base, swallowing the head of his cock down and holding his breath, throat convulsing. “I could swallow you so deep that if I reached up to massage my throat, you would feel it from the inside.”

“ _Oh my god,_ ” Newt moaned, fist flying over his cock. This couldn’t be real. Hermann  _couldn’t_  be saying stuff like that, and to  _him_! “Keep talking, Hermann, please, fuck, I’m  _so close!_ ”

“I— I would grip you by that tattoo of Kaiceph that wraps around your hip, and hold you there, twitching in my mouth and across my tongue until you absolutely came apart, until you were practically sobbing, until you came hot and screaming into me, radiating like a supernova, filling my mouth and  _aching_.” He could hear the short, hungry half-whines that spilled from Newton’s lips. “And I would lick you clean and flick your piercing with my tongue until you collapsed into yourself, shivering, like a neutron star. Only then would I let you go.” Newton’s voice trembled, but he said no words, only cried out. “Will you come for me, Newton?” Hermann whispered into the phone, and Newton shouted.

“Fuck,  _fuck_ , Hermann!  _Hermann_  I’m gonna come so fucking hard, I’m, I’m coming,  _fuck, Hermann!_ ” and his rolling chair creaked, and he arched, and it felt like he was coming forever, felt like he’d never come down. “Oh  _shit_ , oh god, Hermann, oh,  _ohh…_ ” 

That final moan, so quiet, so utterly destroyed, was what did it for Hermann. “Newton,  _yes—!_ ” he hissed, spilling over his hand and quaking, feeling hot come dripping over his knuckles and wishing for one delirious moment that he could bring his fingers to Newton’s lips to suck them clean. 

Newt leaned his head on the chair’s backrest. Finally, his shoulders relaxed, and when he glanced down, his cock,  _thank every god_ , had begun to go soft. He was so relieved, he laughed. 

“Hermann, that did it! Holy shit, oh my god!” He was practically giddy. “I am so fucking sore, but  _holy fuck_ , I feel so much better.” His pulse fluttered in his ears. “Thanks, dude. Really. And remind me to turn it down forcefully if anyone offers me any of this stuff again.” In a moment, he would grab for the paper towels and clean his hand. He would tuck himself away, he would clean up his desk, and he would turn off the lights in the lab. But first, he was going to float for a moment, quietly rejoicing that yet another crisis was averted. He couldn’t believe Hermann had done, or at least  _said_ , all that stuff, for him. 

With a grimace, Hermann was reaching for a tissue, and wiping his hand. When the tissue was in the bin and he was comfortably resettled in his bunk, he cleared his throat. “Quite,” he sniffed. 

Newt snickered at the speed at which Hermann went back to being a stuffy academic, after having purred such terrifically lewd things into the phone just moments before. “Oh come on, at least take credit where credit is due. I didn’t know you had it in you, to be honest.”

“Oh, for God’s sake—” Hermann groused, passing a hand over his face. He didn’t want to go into all that. 

“Who knew you’d be such a freak in the sheets? I mean, not that that’s a bad thing, y’know. I’m not  _ungrateful_.”

“Newton.”

“I always kinda wondered, you know? Like, if you were completely non-sexual, or if you were like  _crazy_  kinky. I never thought there’d be any in-between. Nice to see another hypothesis proved right.”

Hermann took a calming, steadying breath. “Think about it a lot, did you?” he needled, if only to shut Newton down. 

“I—!” Newt faltered, realising he’d talked himself into a corner again. “So, Hermann… What do you say we never speak of this again?” he ventured, and Hermann was all too eager to answer in the affirmative. He made Newt promise to get a check-up in the morning, and said he’d be asking the medical staff to make sure he did, and Newt sneered and mocked his nagging tone, and things, generally, went back to normal. 

“And Newton,” Hermann cut in, before hanging up, “The next time you go and do something so idiotic as  _direct contact_ with your precious ‘samples’? Don’t think I’ll be so willing to help you.” 

Newt rolled his eyes. “Good  _night_ , Hermann,” he deadpanned.

Hermann, at long last, allowed his eyelids to droop. “Good night.”

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve seen a lot of fanfics that use weird Kaiju biology for aphrodisiac purposes, but never one that used the ‘bone powder— for male potency!’ line. So this was my go at it. Hope you all enjoyed, even if this is a deviation from the standard fare of my writing. 
> 
> Same schtick: tumblr, same name, more fic, more stuff.


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